Apple is reportedly taking a big step into making its own displays, and it isn't using the technology you may be most familiar with. According to a Bloombergreport, a secret facility in California close to Apple Park houses engineers developing microLED displays for Apple mobile devices. While Apple has been making its own chips for its mobile devices for a few years, this would be the first time the company has attempted build its own displays.

MicroLED technology is still in its infancy, particularly in its application in consumer electronics. We last saw microLEDs show up in Samsung's gigantic, 146-inch TV dubbed "The Wall," which it debuted at CES in January. Making microLED displays is no easy task since the panels are made up of individual pixels that need to be individually calibrated. Each pixel is self-emitting as well, meaning microLED displays do not require individual backlights. But microLEDs produce displays that are incredibly bright, with deep blacks and high contrast ratios; they are also slimmer and don't require as much power as their LCD counterparts.

Due to the complexity of microLED display development and application, Apple is reportedly still in the experimental phases when it comes to these panels. The company reportedly has about 300 engineers working on the initiative, reportedly codenamed "T159n" which is being overseen by Lynn Youngs, who helped develop touchscreen display technology for the original iPhone and iPad. Apple also gleaned some intellectual property about microLED development when it acquired the screen-tech startup LuxVue back in 2014.

Game makers looking for inspiration or stock content to use in their Unreal Engine projects now have access to thousands of skins, animations, effects, dialogue snippets, and environment components from Paragon, the company's defunct free-to-play "action MOBA." Epic is making the audio and visual assets from the game available for free use in Unreal Engine projects, with "no strings attached," through its Unreal Engine Marketplace, starting today.

I first met Stephen Hawking in March 2003, when the most famous scientist in the world visited Texas. For a young science reporter at the Houston Chronicle, an invitation to interview Hawking during a stop in College Station rated as a real coup.

Reporters never like to submit their questions to a subject in advance; indeed it is something I often refuse to do. However, with Hawking and his limited ability to communicate, this was a prerequisite. As almost all of his motor skills had atrophied, Hawking used a custom-made computer to form words, which were then spoken through a voice synthesizer. Typically, he could form a short sentence in about five to 10 minutes.

Prior to meeting with him, I asked a number of scientific questions of Hawking. But, after all of these years, the one query, and answer, that sticks with me concerned the hottest issue of the day, the impending Iraq conflict. What did he think about the likelihood of the United States going to war against Iraq?

Enlarge / This headset will give you a much sharper image and a much lighter wallet than the original Vive. (credit: Sam Machkovech)

HTC's higher-resolution Vive Pro, first announced back in January, is setting new records for the price of a mass-market virtual reality headset. In pre-orders starting today ahead of planned April 5 shipments, customers will have to shell out $799 for the improved Vive Pro headset, a price that does not include any controllers or Lighthouse tracking base stations.

While the original Vive also cost $799 when it launched nearly two years ago, that package included two controllers and the two tracking stations necessary for un-occluded, room-scale VR. Existing HTC Vive owners will be able to reuse those accessories if and when they upgrade to the Vive Pro headset. New users, however, will currently have to purchase them à la carte (an HTC representative tells Ars that pricing for a separate "full kit" Vive Pro package will be announced soon).